(Second of two parts. Part one appeared here yesterday.)
As we sailed through turbulent seas in the Gulf, it was clearly going to be a long night so Graham went to sleep in order to be fresh later on when it came time to relieve Ty at the helm. I couldn’t sleep, so periodically I would open the hatch and call up to Ty. He seemed to be having the time of his life in the rough seas, laughing and whooping. Of course our running lights were on and we occasionally would pass other boats headed into shore.
Normally boats would acknowledge each other bay radio or blinking our lights as we passed, but as we got further out in the Gulf we started to encounter boats with their lights low and no radio contact. Ty explained these were probably drug runners from Cuba bringing marijuana to Florida and the lucrative U.S. market. We knew the Coast Guard played hide and seek with these carriers of contraband so we just let them be.
As the night went on and on, the storm built toward its peak. We'd all been through many of these storms, but they normally occurred in the afternoon, not the dead of the tropical night.
That made this one disorienting. The boat tossed about on the waves like a bathtub toy, and I was a bit scared but with Ty at the controls I figured we would probably make it okay.
It's funny but rather confronting our possible mortality I was already imaging what a good story this would be to tell later on. This happened a number of times in my life, like when someone pulled a gun on me in the streets. (That happened three times.) It must be some sort of abnormal personality disorder. Rather than experiencing rational fear, I watched myself sleepwalk through experiences, living to tell the tale later.
In any event, we all wore life vests in case we were to be swept overboard by a surge in waves. Minutes passed like days; hours like weeks. Finally the winds began to subside and the rain let up enough that Graham could take over. Ty came below to study the maps.
“I’m afraid we were blown well off course by the storm,” he said. “So we are probably way to the south of where we should be.
That was troubling news because it meant we would be close to the territorial waters of Cuba and subject to interdiction by the Cuban authorities who didn’t take kindly to "spies" approaching their coast. This was not very long after the disastrous U.S. invasion known as the Bay of Pigs, not to mention the Cuban Missile Crisis, and tensions between the countries were very high.
Ty made a guess at our probable location and took the helm, turning the boat in an elegant if hazardous maneuver to head in a direction like the long angle of an isosceles triangle that theoretically would get us back on course to Sanibel.
Running before the wind never felt this fast before -- we were shooting over the surf like a well-crafted arrow in the night. As the hours passed, all other ship traffic seemed to have dropped away. Ty explained that this was a good thing, as we were out of the major shipping lanes and likely headed into friendlier waters.
Finally after what seemed like an interminable period of time we started glimpsing several faint lights on the shoreline. As we gingerly approached land, Ty recognized the location. It was Marco island, not Cuba.
By then the weather was calming and we just had slow steady waves that were easy to navigate. I took a turn at the helm as we hugged the familiar coastline up the shell islands. When we finally got to our destination it was a great relief to sail under the Causeway’s drawbridge and work our way into the marina, tie up the boat, and start the long walk home on the shell roads.
No one said a word. We just carried our wet gear, enjoying the fresh air under a pre-dawn sky that was studded with stars.
* UK's Prince William says great minds should focus on saving Earth not space travel (Reuters)
* ‘Moneyball’ Thinking Killed the Stolen Base—but It’s Making a Comeback (WSJ)
"As Time Goes By"
A kiss is just a kiss
A sigh is just a sigh
The fundamental things apply
As time goes by
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